Category: Gaming

There’s a tournament at Starlit on Saturday. Dimestore and I signed up for it. However, he’s got a couple’s day with his wife instead, so I’ll be going in solo. This tournament has a special prize for flatlines, so I’m working on a killer deck for a change. I’m a bit stumped on ice balance currently. I’ll probably work and rework it for a few hours tonight.

After the tournament, there’s two options depending on the timing. Make an effort to go check out the local vampire LARP or relax for a bit. I’ve got a birthday party later that night, so that’s where I’ll eventually be, unless I start feeling antisocial again. Though I’ll probably show up as I bought the host a present and so I should go at least to deliver that. I think in theory it’s something he’ll enjoy, but perhaps I’m wrong.

Monday I helped friends move. Showed up with a cargo van, we loaded it to the gills, drove over, unloaded it. Rinse and Repeat. No major hassles, no injuries. A couple squished fingers but no blood for a change.

Afterwards, the timing worked out for me to hit up the local ingress cross faction meetup, something I haven’t done for ages. I probably haven’t done it since I got this job, if not perhaps a bit longer. Given that I tend to only have a weekday night free a week and I’ve had a backlog of social obligations to work through. But, I was parking the moving van nearby that night, and the food there is decent, so I dropped in to be social. A few people were glad to see me, a few people didn’t know me, and a few people were weird. But that’s no surprise. I learned a few things, and I had a few beer. Interesting flavors. That is the one benefit of eating there, you can usually find a tasty brew to go with your meal.

Things got a bit uncomfortable for me when a former friend showed up. I thought about leaving, but I’d already made plans with Dimestore for him to swing through on his way home to grab a datapack from me, so I decided to stick around. For the most part, it was clear we weren’t at the same table. When Dimestore showed up, I pointed out that he was there, they said hello and had a nice conversation. Mildly interesting, since this friend had cut ties with Dimestore and I at the same time, since my stubbornness was obviously contagious. Anyways, it was uncomfortable for me, and I almost regretted that I’d made an effort to extend an olive branch the week prior, even though it was the right thing to do. I was relieved that despite my efforts and the obvious advantages of the situation for him, he’d decided not to bother with it.

Then Tuesday, I saw that someone had started making an attempt to make the geek community a better place in Vancouver. And I thought that would be great. Until I saw that they’d tainted the well already. I’m sure they had the best of intentions, but inviting the rather defensive girlfriend of a man who abuses the word community for his own profit into the group meant to repair the community… I just can’t see that turning out in a positive manner. Given his actions regarding Zombiewalk and various other things, I’m uncomfortable dealing with him. I’ve burnt out on it. I talked to the guy who’d done the inviting for the group and the guy who’d started the group, let them know that for health reasons, I’m not interested in being involved. My experiences with that individual have been so toxic that probability of his involvement was enough to make me not want to be involved, to avoid that ugliness in my life.

I’m torn between ranting about him further or just trying to put the whole thing out of my mind. On one hand, if I rant, it has the potential for people to understand where I’m coming from, balanced against the potential for him to use my writing against my friends who still deal with him. On the whole, it’s probably healthier to just put it out of my head. Except this is my place, so I should be able to write what I want here. Eh, I’ll just leave it for now.

Afterwards, I was looking into some of the symptoms of PTSD, as someone in my extended social network had been interested in the job opening here, but had mentioned he had some doubts about taking the job while he was still sorting out his PTSD and his treatment. I noticed that the symptoms for PTSD match up with what I’ve been experiencing. It’s something I need to examine and it’s resulted in me doing some reflecting.

As far as I can recall, there aren’t really any specific events that would qualify as traumatic in my life. My childhood was pretty alienated and I have some issues with betrayal and belief, but there are specific major incidents, just a variety of times when things were rough.

I posted on my facebook that I was beginning to consider the idea that I was dealing with something that had similar symptoms to a mild form of PTSD, and that it was related to my dealings with the Zombiewalk and goth drama. I was vaguebooking, something I hate to do, but after the lecture I received last Saturday for going into too much detail, it seemed reasonable. In response, I got told off for comparing my bullshit to being in a war or being raped. Obviously my traumas weren’t severe enough for me to qualify for even a mild form of something similar to PTSD. My response was hostility and I opened a chat with the person, explaining to them that they really didn’t understand the whole story, and I was trying to work through something, not trying to whine. Apparently the hostility came across pretty strongly, as they got rather upset and wanted to end the conversation, since they felt I was bullying them.

Yes, I was bullying them for responding to a negative comment on my facebook page. Well, I guess that’s how the internet works.

Maybe it’s a case of my words being chosen poorly, or coming across hyperbolic. Maybe the symptoms only fit because of a psychological version of hypochondria. I do know that I have some things that are pretty nasty triggers for me, and that I need to sort them out. Not dealing with them is probably partially responsible for my current state of isolation.

I read something interesting about the Sexodus and male responses to feminism tonight, and I’d intended to comment on it, but I’m already over my 1K words and it’s nearly time to catch my bus so that’ll have to wait for another entry.

The most common questions that people ask when they see this site is Murder Hobo Club? Really? What the Hell? Are you advocating getting together to murder the homeless? Or are you homeless murders who share tips? Are you insane? What the hell are you thinking?

Well, the phrase murder hobo is something that has some resonance for me. For reasons I can’t understand, it’s something that has come to mind randomly over the last few years. I think I originally heard it on the Order of the Stick forums, or the Pathfinder forums. It referred to a style of gaming that I think has become all too common. The characters, the heroes of the narrative, rather than having a noble goal, end up wandering around, with no ties to a society, randomly murdering monsters, some of which have been proven to be intelligent. And for the most part, rather than questioning the implications of such actions, gaming culture has glorified them.

I recall one public roleplaying game that I was playing in, during which the majority of the damage done to the party was the result of my chemist character throwing around magical molotov cocktails. He was being effective, the enemies rarely had a chance to harm any of the party members. From one point of view, this was a well built character. He efficiently removed the opposition to the party.

From another point of view, he was something of a monster. Even if he was doing the right thing, for the right reasons, he going about it the wrong way. He had completely disregarded the advice of Nietzsche. He had quite clearly become a monster, while fighting monsters.

At that point, he and the party of adventurers, they weren’t heroes, they were wandering murder hobos. Around then, I realized that something just wasn’t quite right and I took a break from playing that character.

Later, I was running a public game and I realized that I hadn’t been alone in my descent from hero to monster, it was something more common to the gamer experience. While most systems have rules that make it less likely that you’ll do splash damage to innocent civilians, many systems have impressive destructive powers that would have at the very least a psychological impact on the civilians who observe your actions. Rather than praising these “adventurers”, writing songs about them, looking up to them, and all the things that these grateful villagers supposedly do, it seems more likely that they’d either be hiding from the party, or getting out the pitchforks and trying to chase them out of town.

The shift towards anti-heroes in fantasy media and geek culture isn’t something new, but I think in many cases the consequences of this shift are neglected or ignored.

When I’m playing Shadowrun, I know I’m taking on the role of someone who lives outside the system, as the game is about being a deniable asset. While it is possible to create a party who are all on the right side of the law, this is not the expectation or the norm. It’s understood that you’ll be breaking the law, and getting well paid for it. It is a game that focuses on the many shades of grey.

Fantasy Roleplaying games, and by that I mean games in the style of Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, tend to assume that the party are heroes. The core assumption is that you are the good guys, trying to save the world from the forces of darkness.

Both D&D and Pf have the 2 Axis of Alignment, Order vs Chaos and Good vs Evil. There are plenty of memes and postings out there talking about how alignments gets abused, and for the most part, it gets treated like a joke. After all, these are games, we are playing them for fun; we’re rolling dice to enjoy a story with friends, to relax. To get a chance to escape from the stress and mundane aspects of our ordinary lives. So, why take them seriously?

 Well, at some point, we realized that the idea of role playing had some merit as a tool in psychotherapy. We realized that being able to play out various scenarios helped us to engage with ideas on a less cerebral way than merely thinking about them. So, if role playing is valid as a psychological tool, then shouldn’t we consider the psychological aspects of our roleplaying?

Today: a Netrunner tournament at a local gaming shop with my friend Dimestore; (At least that’s his nom de net).

It’ll be first constructed tournament, and my second Netrunner tournament overall.

My corp deck, I’m pretty comfortable with, I’ve played it a few times and I know what it needs. Then again, I swapped out a handful of cards last night and I’m not sure how much impact that’ll have.

My runner deck, not so much. Its been evolving over the last little while, but I’ve not played it enough. It’s been virtually scrapped twice in the last 24 hours. I started with a something that straddled two different ideas,  but its now much tighter and focused mostly on a single concept now.

Odds are good I’ll write up a summary after the tournament, with some thoughts on what worked and what didn’t. There’s two more tournaments coming up next month and I’ll be able to play in both of them.

Right now, I’m riding the bus and I’m typing up this post as a way to clear my mind and warm up my brain. To me, it feels like the writing style is different than my usual style, but I’m not sure how much that’ll come across. I feel like I’m being more deliberate and less casual about my word choice.

On some level, that’ll be because I’m typing on the phone, and I have to concentrate more on the typing than I do when I’m at a keyboard.

I’ll get there shortly, I’ll get registered, then have a coffee while I wait for things to get started. Or maybe a hot chocolate, since I don’t need the caffeine jitters.

—

An hour later, registration is done, maintenance has been taken care of and people are socialising before the tournament.

Given the number of people attending, its unlikely I’ll be taking home one of the prizes today. This one has prizes for the top 8, so my odds weren’t terrible if only a dozen people showed up, but I think we are at twice that number.

I had my coffee at the Starbucks after I arrived. The app told me it was free because of my upcoming birthday; a pleasant surprise.

I’m not sure a peppermint mocha was the best choice. It was tasty, but I’m feeling a little bit twitchy. Hard to tell if its the caffeine or the nerves.

Still, I’m not here for victory, as much as I might covet getting a cool play mat, I’m here to have a fun social Saturday.

Afterwards I’ve got to run some errands and then I’ve committed to heading down to Noir. In theory I should take my violet wand with me, and do some electrical play demos.

And now, it begins.

—

The first match up is over. My runner deck lost, a combination of card draw issues and memory issues. My corp deck won due to the timer rule. It was close though. Initially my adjustments and his choice of runner threw me off, as the math was slightly different than I was expecting.

Time for a bite to eat, then the next round.

Dimestore lost one and tied one, the tie being one he had the advantage on, but the time wasn’t on his side. He tends to play rather slowly, so this isn’t unexpected. His matchup had the amusing coincidence of a set of neutralisation elements for the other players ability.

—
Next round was Dimestore and I, which was a brutal matchup. We’d played each other a few times, so it was a semi predictable battle. Our first battle took forever, but I managed to just barely win. Our second match was high speed, as we had less than 20 minutes to play the entire game. My opening hand was amazing, his was a stalled hand. He had a deadly deck, but I managed to stay alive.

—
My third match up is against Nels of Terminal Seven.

—

That was a hell of a pair of games. I’ll need to actually write them up in detail for the Netrunner geeks, but suffice it to say that it was bizarre. The first game was one of the longest I’ve played in a while. We finished with less than 10 minutes left. And then started the second game, which ended with a 4-3 time over victory.

It was some of most fun I’ve had in a while.

—

Fourth game, I’m feeling burnt out. I suspect a sugar crash. I should have planned better in terms of caffeine and snacks.

I lost both games, my worst pair of matches of the day.

—

Fifth round, I got a bye. I’m not sure what that means in terms of my overall ranking, but I don’t think it’s a good sign. Still, it’s been an interesting day. I’ve still got to run those errands before heading down to Noir, but I’m quickly running out of time.

—

So, got the final rankings, and I came in 15th out of 20 players. Dimestore came in 19th. He was happy not to be dead last.